How to Get a Wikipedia Page Approved in 2024

In today's digital landscape, where information is power and credibility is currency, knowing how to get a Wikipedia page approved for your company is more than just a mark of prestige – it's a strategic move towards enhancing your brand's authenticity and reach. Imagine having a dedicated space on the world’s largest encyclopedia, a space that not only tells your company's story but also cements its achievements and milestones in the annals of the digital world. This is the power of a Wikipedia page, a power that can significantly elevate your company's online presence.

A successfully approved Wikipedia page offers a multitude of benefits. It serves as an authoritative source of information about your company, providing potential clients, investors, and the curious public with a detailed and credible narrative of your business journey. This isn’t just about having an online presence; it’s about having a presence that carries weight, one that’s underpinned by the reliability and trustworthiness associated with Wikipedia. In an era where online reputation can make or break a business, a Wikipedia page acts as a beacon of trust and legitimacy.

However, the journey of getting a Wikipedia page approved for your company, especially in the year 2024, is fraught with challenges and intricacies. Wikipedia’s stringent guidelines, its emphasis on notability and neutrality, and the rigorous editorial standards that have only gotten tougher can make the approval process seem like a daunting task. Time and time again, businesses endeavor to publish Wikipedia pages for themselves only to have them taken down by high-ranking Wikipedia admins within a matter of days.

From Conflict-of-Interest (COI) suspicions to failure to meet General Notability Guidelines (GNG), there is no shortage of reasons a Wikipedia admin can cite to take down your company’s Wikipedia page. This is where the right guidance and expertise come into play, turning a challenging process into a manageable and successful venture.

In the following sections, we will guide you through each step of this Wikipedia publishing process. From understanding the prerequisites of notability to navigating the editorial guidelines, from drafting a well-structured article to maintaining it post-publication, each aspect will be covered comprehensively. This guide to getting a Wikipedia page approved for your company, provided by myself and my team at Maximatic Media, aims to empower you with the knowledge and strategy required to create a Wikipedia page that is not just informative but also resilient in the face of the platform’s dynamic editing environment. Our agency has been providing Wikipedia publishing services since early 2020 and with about forty clients served successfully thus far, our guide on this subject matter should give you more than enough information to formulate your approval-friendly Wikipedia drafts.

So, whether you're a burgeoning startup making waves in your industry or an established firm with a legacy of innovation, this guide is your first step towards carving out your rightful place in the digital encyclopedia. With all that out of the way, let’s dive into each of the elements to answer the question of “how to get a Wikipedia page approved for your company in 2024 (and have it not get deleted)”.

Wikipedia Page “Stickiness”

Let’s start this journey by first addressing a relatively weird term you’ll find being tossed around a lot in the field of paid Wikipedia publishing services: “stickied.”

The concept of "stickiness" in the context of Wikipedia publishing has to do with the longevity and resilience of a newly published Wikipedia page. Wikipedia is an open-source platform that relies on volunteer editors to maintain the quality of content on the site. These editors follow a set of guidelines to decide what content is notable and reliable enough to appear on Wikipedia.

When a new page is created, it undergoes scrutiny from higher-tier editors and admins, who assess whether the page meets Wikipedia's stringent notability and reliability criteria. If they decide that it doesn't, the page can be deleted or heavily revised, oftentimes within a matter of days from its publishing date. This constant monitoring and removal process is part of Wikipedia's commitment to maintaining a high-quality, reliable source of information and minimizing the extent to which Wikipedia is used in an advertorial fashion.

Stickiness, therefore, refers to the ability of a new page to withstand this scrutiny and remain live on the site. A stickied page is one that has been well-constructed, sufficiently sourced with credible references, and clearly meets the notability requirements. The page not only gets published but also stays published, or "sticks.”

Now, this may already be common knowledge to the bulk of you that are actively researching how to get a Wikipedia page approved for your company. However, since the launch of our Wikipedia publishing service, we’ve dealt with a lot of clientele who have attempted to create a Wikipedia page for themselves in the past and were hit with this harsh reality check. An alarming percentage of those cases fell prey to freelancers or companies claiming to specialize in Wikipedia publishing that charged them anywhere between $500 - $2000 to create and publish a Wikipedia page for their company, knowing full well that there was absolutely zero chance that the page would actually remain on Wikipedia. Not an outright scam, mind you, but very much bordering on one.

The truth of the matter is that 95% of entities seeking a Wikipedia page do not truly warrant one and this statement is corroborated by Wikipedia’s own statistic, stating that a mind-boggling 98% of newly published pages get nominated for deletion. So how do we combat these ridiculously low odds? Well, let’s delve into what’s arguably the biggest factor of all when it comes to page stickiness:

Notability (General Notability Guideline)

So diving right into the nitty-gritty of getting a Wikipedia page approved, we must first cover the concept of notability - the most important aspect out of all the points I’ll be covering in this guide. Notability in the context of Wikipedia simply means how often reputable, secondary sources are referencing you in their media output. Said references come in many forms, whether it be a full feature article, a short bio in a listicle, or just a basic citation. However, not all references are made equal. Some references carry significantly more weight than others, either due to their “comprehensiveness” (i.e. a full feature article with the sole focus being on you) or the “reputability” of the source doing the referencing (i.e. mentioned in Forbes vs mentioned in “Biznes-News-Blog”).

Comprehensiveness

Let’s first delve into the topic of comprehensiveness. The comprehensiveness of your reference can be calculated by just a couple of factors: the word count of the article, the keyword density of your entity’s name within said article, and whether the entity is being referenced in the title/headline of the article. These three components determine the significance laid upon the entity by the reporting outlet. The more extensive the coverage, the higher the significance in the eyes of Wikipedia (i.e. a full-feature, 750-word article on Forbes vs a 150-word entry in “Top 30 E-Commerce Businesses of 2023” listicle on Forbes).

Reputability

Now that we’ve covered what I mean by “comprehensiveness,” let’s talk about the other component influencing the power of your media coverage: reputability. The concept of reputability is basically as straightforward as it gets. Just about any semi-famous news or media outlet that you can think of is viewed as a “reputable” source by Wikipedia. The likes of Forbes, Mashable, Entrepreneur, etc., are all stellar examples of significant coverage that corroborates you or your brand as a notable entity in the eyes of Wikipedia. However, a full-feature article on each of those aforementioned sites costs $15,000, $2,400, and $6,750 respectively. If you as an entity see no utility in being featured on these media outlets beyond simply meeting the eligibility criteria for a Wikipedia page, it makes little sense to purchase those placements.

The Role of Domain Authority in References

This is where a more esoteric metric comes into play: Domain Authority (DA). A DA score is effectively a ranking assigned to a domain which we can use to assess any given site’s authority in comparison to the rest of the web. It is calculated using the domain’s age, the amount of other sites referring to it, and the reputability of said referrals. Basically the same criteria influencing the site’s probability of getting its own stickied Wiki page but quantified by a score from 1 to 100. Now let’s return back to the three examples of reputable media outlets I’ve given above: Forbes, Mashable, and Entrepreneur. Forbes has a DA score of 95, Mashable has a DA score of 92, and Entrepreneur has a DA score of 93. In general, all three publications are highly renowned, outpacing the vast majority of other sites on the web with scores of 90 and above.

However, if referring back to the pricing of each placement, we see a pretty drastic incongruence with the value derived from each media outlet in the context of meeting the eligibility standards for your Wikipedia page. Forbes, despite being three measly basis points off of Mashable’s DA score, carries more than a 600% higher price tag. Now sure, Forbes has a significantly higher readership and holds far more clout than Mashable does, but if focusing solely on its impact in the context of being a Wikipedia reference, it really doesn’t warrant the price you pay for it when compared to other viable alternatives.

And these are just the three sites we’ve mentioned so far. Take a look at the following spreadsheet containing 400+ available media placements and keep an eye on the DA column:

Spreadsheet

As you scroll through, you’ll find that there are a plethora of Google-News-Approved sites that have a relatively high DA despite costing a fraction of what the internationally distinguished media outlets cost. Sites like MSN, HackerNoon, Mashable, San Francisco Examiner, etc. Now granted, they don’t exactly pack the same sort of punch that Forbes does, but in the context of a Wikipedia page, you are considerably better off securing five B-tier placements in comparison to a singular A-tier placement. So long as you are not cheaping out by opting for “Biznes-News-Blog” as your referring source and stick to Google-News-Approved publications, a varied list of reputable placements within your references section will take you much further than just one extremely reputable citation.

Reliability in References

Now that we’ve extensively covered the topic of notability, let’s talk about a factor of media assessment that is unique to Wikipedia: Reliability. Reliability is Wikipedia’s way of determining how trustworthy the source of incoming information is. It’s one of the only ORM services that views this factor as being separate from notability, which makes the process of selecting publications a bit more complex.

Given that Maximatic Media is a PR agency, first and foremost, we deal with a lot of Online Reputation Management (ORM) requests ranging from Google Knowledge Panel Creation Services (GKPs) to Wikipedia Publishing services to Social Media Verifications on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. Theoretically, say that we receive a client seeking to get verified on all social platforms, get a GKP, and get a Wikipedia page published about them. All in all, the works. Let’s say that they also came to us with a decent bit of pre-existing media coverage and have full-feature articles about them published on the Daily Mail, Newsweek, RT News, OK Magazine, and E! News.

Now, in the context of GKP Creation and Social Media Verification, we would notify this imaginary client that we are prepared to move forward with their case and are relatively optimistic about their probability of success. Given that their PR stems from highly recognizable publications with DAs in the high 80s/90s, there is little reason to suspect that they’d get rejected on the basis of notability. However, when it comes to Wikipedia, we, unfortunately, would have to reject this case, and we’ll explain why shortly.

Despite the fact that each of those publications is considered notable by Wikipedia’s standards (which more or less follow the same criteria as Google and Meta mind you), not a single one of those listed outlets is viewed as a trustworthy source by Wikipedia. Newsweek is viewed as a biased news reporter, RT News is viewed as propagandized and state-run media, and Daily Mail, OK Mag, and E! News are all considered low-quality, tabloid-like sources of information. Creating a Wikipedia page with only these articles as citations is basically a guaranteed nomination for deletion waiting to happen.

This is largely why, when purchasing press for Wikipedia, you want to stick to media outlets that are independent, journalistic sources with a good reputation behind them. So going back to the spreadsheet of PR placements we linked to previously, sites like Times of Malta, Chiang Rai Times, and The South African are all good examples of reputable, independent news sites that meet the notability criteria whilst remaining relatively affordable. The cream of the crop, however, would be publications like Wisconsin State Journal, Arizona Daily Star, Sacramento Bee, Miami Herald, etc. Localized, independent news sources that have a significant amount of authority within their local domains while having an international readership similar to that of the NYT and Chicago Tribune.

Lastly, let’s talk about press releases from reputable sites like Yahoo, Bloomberg, Business Insider, etc. Wikipedia views press releases, especially those bought from press release aggregators, with a LARGE measure of suspicion, considering them as 'purchased' content. Purchasing these is really like blowing money down the drain since these can only be used as secondary sources. It's best to stay away from them and stick only to editorial articles — those written by the staff or contributors of the publication and not syndicated through a press release aggregator. Most Wikipedia admins will instantly sniff out press releases, and the mere presence of them in your company’s Wikipedia page’s reference section will only bring a greater degree of scrutiny to all of your other citations as well. In short, DO NOT cite press release articles within your references.

The Question of Quantity

A pretty common question we get asked in our Wikipedia page creation consultations with clients is what amount of references “guarantees” a stickied Wikipedia page for their company. What is the absolute minimum that I can get away with? And truth be told, we honestly have a hard time answering this question as we don’t truly know. Without foreseeing the future and knowing which admin gets assigned to review which page and what their opinion is on each referring publication, it is impossible to predict the actual amount. In our experience of creating Wikipedia pages for companies over the last couple of years, we’ve found no shortage of BS reasons given for rejecting a specific source. With the way Wikipedia is organized, it really just comes down to luck. We’ve witnessed a client obtain a stickied Wikipedia page for their company with just five references, and we’ve also witnessed a client get their page deleted with upwards of 15 strong references.

Having said that though, if taking into account the median number of references across all of our successful cases, a good benchmark to aim for would be roughly seven semi-strong, corroborating references with a DA of 75 and above. Again, this number is not set in stone and may vary contingent on the entity (living persons oftentimes given more leniency than corporate brands) but seven is basically the optimal zone. In the event an admin decides to reject one of the citations, the page still has five other references to fall back on, making it difficult to argue a lack of notability within a nomination vote. But if you really wanna take your chances, five strong references is the absolute minimum. Just be aware that you are fully at the mercy of the Wikipedia admin assigned to review your page in this scenario. If they decide one of those references isn’t valid, the Wikipedia page is basically guaranteed to be removed on the basis of notability.

“Veteran” Wikipedia Editor Accounts

Now that we have finally finished covering the most important factor impacting your Wikipedia page’s stickiness, let’s move on to what is likely the second most important factor: the Wikipedia editor account that's doing the publishing. Let’s imagine for a second that we have a ready-to-go Wikipedia article that is well-constructed, worded in an objective, non-advertorial manner, and contains plenty of citations from reputable sources verifying each and every piece of factual information within the article. Now, let’s imagine that we take this exact same article, word-for-word and publish it from two separate editor accounts. One of those accounts has been around for 7+ years and has made 3,000+ edits across various existing pages alongside the 300+ pages they’ve created and published themselves. The other account was registered three days ago, has zero experience editing other people’s entries, and their very first edit is about to be a brand new page that very few people ever heard of, despite how well-cited it may be.

Assuming they both publish the exact same content, word-for-word with the same exact references, whose entry do you think will receive more scrutiny and general nitpicking from the admins? The editor who’s been around for close to a decade and has a historical track record of quality contributions? Or the editor who had literally just made an account on Wikipedia a few days ago and decided that publishing a page about a little-known entity is a good first step in his lifelong Wikipedia journey?

That’s really all that can be said about this topic as it's quite straightforward. Aged accounts with a history of edits simply tend to be more trusted when it comes to new page creation than accounts that are brand new. If you have a semi-strong page with somewhat questionable references, the reputation and history of the editor doing the publishing can be the thing that nudges it over the edge of acceptance.

That’s partially why we charge $1,500 for our Wikipedia publishing service. No one should pay fifteen hundred bucks to write a 400-word entry about their brand; that’s obscene even for the best of writers. Instead, you pay for the privilege of having your company’s Wikipedia page published by a somewhat renowned Wikipedia editor, minimizing the degree to which your entry elicits suspicion and thus maximizing your chances of success i.e., “sticking”.

Drafting the Wikipedia Page

Now that we’ve covered the two most important aspects influencing your page’s stickiness probability, let’s move on to the last and arguably, least important factor out of them all: the actual writing. Now don’t get me wrong, a poorly written Wikipedia page is still very much a massive red flag when entering the sandbox stage. However, the knowledge required to write an objective, Wikipedia-compliant page for your company is far more prevalent and less clandestine than the knowledge required to make the entity eligible for one.

Just read about a dozen or so Wikipedia pages out there on various companies and emulate the language and writing style used by their editors to the best degree you can. Assuming that you are a native speaker and don’t have any glaring grammatical errors within your writing, nine times out of ten, the page ends up being eligible for publishing. We’ve had plenty of clients write their own pages that required little to no editing on our side prior to being published.

There’s not much we can add to this that hasn’t already been covered by Wikipedia themselves at length (which you can read on this link here:).

Aside from the common tidbits of knowledge such as not using promotional language or writing in an informal tone, our one last piece of unorthodox advice is to not go overboard with the length of the entry. The shorter your company’s Wikipedia page is, the lower the attack surface of it will be. The best pages are those that have just a couple of paragraphs in them, ranging between 200 and 350 words. The longer your Wikipedia page is, the higher the chances that you may get flagged for some random factoid that didn’t get referenced enough within the sources you’ve cited to be considered “factually verifiable.”

Keep it to a minimum and only write about things that are easily fact-checked and warrant being on Wikipedia. Beyond that, just refer to Wikipedia’s own guidelines for written content and read a couple of already published company Wikipedia pages for a quick inspo-sesh.

Conclusion to Our Guide on Getting a Wikipedia Page Approved

Now that we’ve covered each aspect worth mentioning on the topic of getting a Wikipedia page approved for your company, let’s do a brief overview of what we’ve discussed thus far. Starting with the concept of 'stickiness,' we explored the level of resilience required for your company’s Wikipedia page to endure its rigorous editorial environment. We delved into the essence of notability, emphasizing the importance of how and where your company is mentioned in reputable sources.

On that same note, we also tackled the nuances of reputability, highlighting the significance of citations from esteemed publications and how you can best assess the “value” of each placement when doing PR to meet Wikipedia’s eligibility criteria. The subject of Domain Authority (DA) and the inclusion of Maximatic Media’s PR Spreadsheet showed you precisely what options can guarantee you the best bang for your buck when it comes to selecting and obtaining media coverage.

Furthermore, we addressed the often misunderstood aspect of reference quantity versus quality, shedding light on the importance of relevant and robust citations. The role of 'Veteran' editor accounts in the publishing process was also a key focus, demonstrating how the account's history can influence the success of your page.

Finally, we touched on the drafting process itself, offering insights into the art of composing a Wikipedia page that aligns with the platform's stringent standards. Each of these elements collectively forms the mosaic of knowledge necessary for navigating the complex yet rewarding journey of getting a Wikipedia page approved for your company.

The process, as detailed in this guide, is not without its challenges. From navigating the intricacies of Wikipedia's notability and neutrality guidelines to understanding the significance of 'stickiness' for your page, each step requires careful consideration and strategic planning. The potential pitfalls – conflict of interest issues, the daunting risk of nomination for deletion, and the overall challenge of maintaining the 'stickiness' of your page – underscore the importance of thorough preparation and adherence to Wikipedia's stringent standards.

By following the insights and strategies presented here, informed by the expertise of the team at Maximatic Media, you're equipped to embark on a journey that not only enhances your company's online presence but solidifies its standing in the digital world. This guide is a comprehensive resource for anyone seeking to navigate the complex yet rewarding path of getting a Wikipedia page approved for their company, ensuring that your efforts result in a resilient and informative page that withstands the test of time and scrutiny.

As we conclude this detailed exploration, it's our hope that you feel more prepared and confident in your ability to get a Wikipedia page approved for your company – a page that not only informs and engages but also stands as a lasting symbol of your company's enduring impact and reputation.